Nokia is looking for every edge it can
sharpen in its fight with Apple and RIM for the high-end smartphone
market. Smartphones are growing in popularity and Nokia is seeing its
market share drop faster than average rates in the
industry.

DailyTech reported yesterday that Nokia would
be unveiling
a new high-end smartphone at Nokia World that ran Maemo. Today
Nokia has made the Linux-derived Maemo device a reality with the
official announcement.

The new Nokia
N900 packs an ARM Coretex-A8 CPU in with up to 1GB of application
memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration. According to Nokia,
the result of the powerful processor and the Maemo OS is that users
of the N900 get a PC-like multitasking experience. Nokia says the
power of the N900 allows many applications to run
simultaneously.

The N900 features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard
and supports up to ten personal email addresses. The device is
designed for easy texting and email and sports 32GB of onboard
storage. Memory expansion is offered with up to 16GB via a microSD
card. The device sports a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss
optics.

"With Linux software, Mozilla-based browser
technology and now also with cellular connectivity, the Nokia N900
delivers a powerful mobile experience," says Anssi Vanjoki,
Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia. "The Nokia N900 shows
where we are going with Maemo and we'll continue to work with the
community to push the software forward. What we have with Maemo is
something that is fusing the power of the computer, the internet and
the mobile phone, and it is great to see that it is evolving in
exciting ways."

Nokia says its N900 supports Adobe Flash
9.4, something lacking from the iPhone. Other features of the handset
include a high-resolution WVGA touch screen, HSPA internet
connectivity and integrated Wi-Fi. The handset runs the Mozilla web
browser. Nokia expects to launch the N900 in October for select
markets at a price of 500 EUR.

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The Maemo platform has been Nokia's primary mobile platform (not just for smartphones, but was originally for tablet PCs) for around half a decade now. So your assumption that it is a new OS is completely false. It's just getting more attention because that's what the cell phone market is focusing on these days.

Thanks for the clarification. All of the language about new software development and "showing where Maemo is going" gave me the impression that this was somehow new - perhaps a drastic change in the underlying architecture. My mistake

In that case, disregard my post. I do, however, wish that WebOS/Maemo/Android could join forces one day.